densvartaambulansen

[densvartaambulansen]

The Eaten Tickets

This one takes place on a subway train. There are two people sitting opposite of each other; an old woman and a punk man. The man has colourful hair and is listening to loud music. The woman starts complaining out loud about “the state of today’s youth”. The man doesn’t react to her harsh comments. When a ticket inspector boards the train, the woman takes out her ticket, but the punk snatches it, puts it in his mouth, and swallows. When the ticket inspector approaches them, she claims the punk ate her ticket. The inspector, of course, doesn’t believe her, and she gets a 200kr fine (a little over $20). After he leaves, the punk gives the woman a 200kr banknote, saying he’s had a lot of fun.

That is the Swedish version. The story retold in Janeček’s fourth collection is less detailed.

The incident happens on a tram and the elderly person (in this case also a woman) is acting entitled against the young punk. He teases her about not having a valid ticket, so she shows him the ticket as a proof, and the man immediately grabs it and eats it. The rest of the story is more or less the same – the ticket inspector comes and doesn’t believe the woman’s claims.

Unfortunately, Janeček doesn’t provide any further information about the origin of this urban legend or about its other versions in the Czech Republic.

On the other hand, af Klintberg seems to have more knowledge about it. He claims that this story originated in Denmark in 1984. There’s a press cutting from the year titled Punker tog blilletten (A punk took the ticket), and the introductory sentence of the article reads: “A new urban legend is born.”.

Unlike many other urban legends which warn the reader about “dangerous minorities”, this one makes us sympathize with them, and the old woman is the antagonist. The possible reason for this is that the people in Copenhagen are generally open-minded and rarely hostile against alternative sub-cultures. A huge contribution to this story’s popularity was a Norwegian commercial from 1987 promoting pre-paid public transport cards. The short movie, starring Lasse Åberg, re-enacted the story to show how inconvenient single-use tickets were.

The commercial was shown at the International Film Festival in Cannes, and thus spread to France and Switzerland. Af Klintberg doesn’t mention any countries eastward of Germany in relation to this specific urban legend.

A quick Google search in English (to find out whether a similar story can be found in the US or in the UK) didn’t bring up any relevant results so it’s possible this urban legend is still isolated to Northern and Western Europe.

 -

Sources:

AF KLINTBERG, Bengt. Den uppätna biljetten. Den stulna njuren. Norsteds förlag AB, 1994, s. 86-89. ISBN 91-1-949042-9.

JANEČEK, Petr. Pankáč a revizor podruhé. Černá sanitka: To nejlepší ze současných pověstí a fám. Prague: Plot, 2009, s. 248. ISBN 978-80-7428-014-6.

[densvartaambulansen]

Hairy-Armed Hitchhiker

This urban legend tells the story of a woman, leaving a large store or a shopping centre and coming across a stranger on the parking lot outside. The stranger asks for a lift, claiming they missed their bus and having no other way of getting to their destination. The woman agrees but feels uneasy while they’re on the road. The passenger seems suspicious, so she tries to get rid of them. She stops the car and asks the stranger to get out and retrieve an item from the cargo space (e.g. cigarettes). As soon as the stranger leaves the vehicle, she closes the door and drives away. When she arrives home, she notices the stranger left their bag on the backseat. In the bag she finds but one item – an axe.

The most major difference between the Swedish and the Czech story is the physical appearance of the murderer. While in the Czech version it’s a neat-looking, trustworthy businessman, in the Swedish story it’s a hairy man disguised as a woman (these stories often point out his “hairy hands”). The driver is always a woman. The murder weapon found varies, even within one country – it can be an axe, a garrotte, a gun etc.

Janeček claims that there are dozens of versions in the Czech Republic alone. The story started to spread there at the end of the 20th century but the greatest rise in popularity came from a chain mail in 2004. A garrotte, or a wire is the most common weapon found – only one of the Czech versions mentions an axe instead. An earlier version of the story mentions a gun and a meat cleaver as well. The location varies a lot, which suggests that this urban legend really is widespread. It’s usually a parking lot near a shopping centre on the outskirts of a city or a bigger town, for example Letňany in Prague or Olympia in Brno.

Both Janeček and Klintberg name the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who was active between 1975-1980, as a possible reason for this specific urban legend gaining its popularity. The story itself is much older though – there’s an anecdote from 1834 Britain about a disguised murderer in a horse carriage. From there it spread to the USA and later back to Europe. It reached Göteborg in 1987 and Stockholm two years later. Nowadays is this urban legend known in almost each major town in Sweden – e.g. in Västerås, Sundsvall, or Gävle. The usual place mentioned is IKEA, or the Swedish retail chain ICA.

An interesting feature of this urban legend, pointed out by Janeček, is that it describes an event which could happen to anyone. It’s not limited to a certain social group, nor does it warn the reader about any “exotic” dangers, be it creatures or foreigners, as many other urban legends do. This makes it an even more believable and easily-spread story.

 -

Sources:

AF KLINTBERG, Bengt. Den konstiga kvinnan på IKEA. Den stulna njuren. Norsteds förlag AB, 1994, s. 95-98. ISBN 91-1-949042-9.

JANEČEK, Petr. Stopař. Černá sanitka: To nejlepší ze současných pověstí a fám. Prague: Plot, 2009, s. 10. ISBN 978-80-7428-014-6.

[densvartaambulansen]

The Exploding Cactus

There’s this urban legend going around about a person buying an exotic plant as a decoration for their home. Unfortunately, the plant comes with a dangerous surprise in the form of spiders, a snake, or other unpleasant critters hidden inside. The kinds of the plant and animals vary among different versions of this urban legend and they may vary even within one country.

Bengt af Klintberg uses an example story sent to him by a reader in 1990. The informant is from Trondheim and retells a story which he heard from his friend, who heard it from her hairdresser’s acquaintance.

The hairdresser supposedly bought a potted palm tree in an unspecified store. Upon bringing the palm home and watering it, the palm bent down as if it was thanking her for the water. The hairdresser’s friend also wished to have such a palm tree and ringed the store asking for “that one which bows down and thanks its owner”. But instead, the store sent a team of men in hazmat suits to take care of the hairdresser’s palm because this behaviour wasn’t normal. They sprayed the palm with poison and pulled it out of the pot. A long snake fell out of the trunk. It presumably hatched out of an egg in the tree while it was being transported to Norway and then hid in the tree. The movement of the trunk was caused by the movement of the snake inside.

The Czech example provided in Petr Janeček’s collection of urban legends is quite similar.

It’s introduced as a story told by a friend of a friend about an exotic plant – this time a banana tree – bought in a local Baumax. The tree was making strange movements but the owners disregarded it as hallucinations caused by the drugs they took that day. However, the owners got a phone call from the police asking about the tree and soon a pest control team came. In the tree roots they found a tarantula guarding a bunch of eggs.

This urban legend it quite widespread in Europe. Its earliest roots go back to mid-1970s, when a story known as The Spider in the Yucca appeared. In September 1975 the Swedish evening newspaper Expressen reported a story about a spider hidden in a cactus bought somewhere abroad, and in 1977 a similar report came from Vienna. However, it was mainly in Sweden and Finland where this story was spreading fast. In 1983, Göteborgs-Posten, another Swedish newspaper, reported about a venomous spider hidden in a yucca plant and warned people about the possible dangers of buying exotic plants. Similar reports later emerged in Åbo and Stockholm.

Other countries where this story got popular were for example France, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. In the UK, the seller of the dangerous plant was usually the Marks & Spencer chain. Other reported chains include Baumax, Obi, or Hornbach.

What happened in the story is of course not true. These exotic plants are grown in European greenhouses and undergo regular check-ups. The main source of this urban legend is a man’s mistrust for the foreign, and fear of possibly dangerous critters, such as spiders, and snakes.

-

Sources:

AF KLINTBERG, Bengt. Den hövliga palmen. Den stulna njuren. Norsteds förlag AB, 1994, s. 53-57. ISBN 91-1-949042-9.

JANEČEK, Petr. Zelené nebezpečí. Černá sanitka: To nejlepší ze současných pověstí a fám. Prague: Plot, 2009, s. 144-145. ISBN 978-80-7428-014-6.